Making sense of the story of the transfiguration is not that easy; after all people’s faces do not normally shine like the sun and their clothes become white as light. So some scholars have thought that this may have originally been a resurrection appearance story that has somehow been misplaced earlier in Jesus’ life, which does not necessarily help if our credulity is being stretched by the whole thing in the first place. We simply cannot know whether it is a transferred resurrection story or not, and I believe first of all we need to admit openly that we cannot quite be sure what originally happened. Matthew and Luke must have had St Mark’s gospel in front of them as they wrote this part of their gospels because there as so many very close parallels, even in the language and sentence construction, but they both made a few additions that are not there in Mark so both were obviously prepared to treat their sources fairly freely as they told their version of events at which they was obviously not present. And maybe Mark did the same before them, although Mark may well have known the reminiscences of St Peter himself, in which case we may be hearing in Mark’s gospel, at second hand, a report from Peter of some mystical moment that he, together with James and John spent with Jesus when they recognised in some new and special way his significance. But exactly what happened, what would have been caught on a video camera of the moment, for example, we cannot know and it is probably idle to speculate.
But what perhaps also makes the story more difficult for us is that we would not naturally catch the allusions that would have been evident to the gospel writers first readers. Yet there are some Old Testament parallels that would have been very obvious to them. The cloud from which God speaks on the top of a mountain mentioned by all three Gospel writers was there in Exodus, as indeed were the six days that introduced the transfiguration story in Mark and Matthew, which for some reason became eight days in Luke.. Moses face also shone when he came from the presence of God according to the Old Testament, and of course Moses was the giver of the law, and Elijah the greatest of the prophets in Old Testament times. One part of the message of this gospel story is clear: this Jesus who was so close to God that he shares in God’s glory is at least of equal importance to the greatest figures in Jewish history.
But what was also evident in the original story, and what I believe is critical for us in our understanding of its meaning today, is its close connection with Jesus’ coming suffering. In Mark, Matthew and Luke it follows on closely from the first prediction by Jesus of his coming passion. The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed…’; that is how Luke reports Jesus a few verses earlier, and the transfiguration story, with God saying of Jesus This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased’ follows almost straight on. In other words Jesus’ willingness to embark on the road to Jerusalem even if it meant personal suffering was a prelude to his being seen in a glorified state. It was his willingness to do even that which meant he received God’s further sign of approval, mirroring so obviously as it does what happened at the start of his ministry at his baptism, where almost identical words of approval come from the cloud that surrounds God’s presence.
And it is no accident that nine chapters later in Matthew’s gospel it is those same three disciples, Peter, James and John, who accompany Jesus into the garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus says My soul is sorrowful even unto death’ The witnesses to Jesus’ glory are also the closest witnesses to his suffering, and there is no glory without the cross.
And that, it seems to me, is the real theological significance of this story for us today. Sometimes in the church, even the church today, there can be a sort of sense of glory and even triumph, perhaps most clearly expressed in some of our hymns. We rejoice in knowing the truth of God, we rejoice in knowing Christ, we assert with great confidence that we have a gospel to proclaim and we ask that Jesus should shine in our world and in our nation, and we seek, as it were, to bask in his glory. Well, that is fine, providing always that we also recognise that, for Jesus, his glory went hand in hand with his suffering on the cross, and there could be no glory without that obedient submission to suffering.
And that must be true of his church today as well. Where do we see the church at its most glorious? Well, probably not where it is at its most comfortable, where it is at its easiest, even where it is at its wealthiest. It is rather when we see it engaged as Jesus was in the pain and suffering of this world, and where it gets involved and suffers with it. The church some years ago in South Africa, struggling against apartheid and sometimes suffering for its stance; the church in some Islamic countries today, with individual Christians persecuted for their faith; and the church here in this country when it is truly engaged with the local community, being alongside people in their distress and perplexity, not with some easy solutions, but in simple human solidarity with any who suffer.
That is the church’s true glory. And sometimes, and maybe just sometimes, we see it exemplified in some particular person, as we watched a Mother Teresa stoop to care for a dying person in one of her homes, as we saw an army chaplain cradle a dying soldier who had sought only to bring peace in some divided part of the world, as we heard some years ago of a brave Christian Rwandan cut down by his fellow tribesmen as he sought unsuccessfully to prevent a massacre, perhaps even we, looking at those events through the eyes of faith could see, not a physical but a spiritual glow to those faithful followers of Christ, and just capture some passing glimpse of what the transfiguration is all about.
Canon Bob Reiss